- The activist and journalist Oksana Chelysheva (Russia, 1968) and the Catalan correspondent in Russia, Manel Alías (Berga, 1977), meet for a public conversation on the current state of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine;
- They will be hosted online by the Vice-rector for Internationalization Policy of the University of Barcelona, Raúl Ramos;
- The event will be streamed in Catalan on the Youtube channel of the University of Barcelona’s Solidarity Foundation and in English throughout the EUROM channel.
Oksana Chelysheva is a journalist and human rights activist who opposes Putin. Since 2003, she has covered the situation in the North Caucasus as the publisher of the Russian-Chechen Information Agency, created by the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. After the organization was banned in Russia by anti-extremist legislation and received multiple threats, it has continued its exiled work in Finland since 2008. Chelysheva is the author of the book “I have been followed in the streets” (INTO, Finland, 2013) and co-author of the law firm “International Tribunal for Chechnya” (Sputnik Oy, Finland, 2009). In 2014, at the Writers Unlimited Festival in The Hague, she was awarded the prestigious Oxfam Novib PEN Prize for Freedom of Expression.
Manel Alías is a journalist with a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a postgraduate degree in ENG Video Journalism from Pompeu Fabra University. Since 2001 he has been working for Televisió de Catalunya, where he has presented the children’s news program “Info K” and has been the editor of “La nit al dia”, among other programs. From 2015 to 2021 he was a correspondent for TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio in Moscow. He is the author of the book “Russia, the World’s Greatest Stage” (Now Books, 2021), a multifaceted account of contemporary Russia.